I’ve been meaning to put together a running plot of U.S. smartphone marketshare for some time. The monthly press release from the market research firm comScore contain enough information to do it, but you have to stitch a number of them together as they only report the covered month and the third previous month. Stitching… Continue reading The Smartphone Wars: Still It Rises
Tag: smartphone-wars
The Smartphone Wars: With Enemies Like These, Who Needs Friends?
Android just got a boost it didn’t need. RIM, already staggering after a 5% market-share drop over the last quarter and the Playbook debacle, has just…well, “shot itself through the foot” fails to convey quite the right sort of intensity. In fact it has executed a hitherto-unprecedented form of marketing suicide which can only be… Continue reading The Smartphone Wars: With Enemies Like These, Who Needs Friends?
The Smartphone Wars: multicarrier breakout fail
The news is out that Verizon sold 2.2M iPhones in the roughly 60 days from product launch to their quarterly report. I’ll fess up; this is well over what I was expecting, based on the reports of unimpressive first-week sales. But I also underestimated Android new-unit sales by a larger factor. Even on the very… Continue reading The Smartphone Wars: multicarrier breakout fail
The Smartphone Wars: Android measured at over 50% U.S. market share
Two consecutive smartphone-wars posts is unusual here, I know, but the latest marketshare news is high-explosive stuff. The Guardian in Great Britain has published data from a European market-research outfit, Kantar WorldPanel Comtech; the article is titled Nokia and RIM bleeding smartphone share while Android cleans up, and includes a very informative table of smartphone… Continue reading The Smartphone Wars: Android measured at over 50% U.S. market share
The Smartphone Wars: The Stages of Apple-Cultist Denial
It has been quite humorous watching the acolytes of the iPhone sink into deeper and deeper denial as Android blows through obstacles at ever-accelerating speed. It would require an epic poet, or perhaps a psychiatrist specializing in religious mania, to do full justice to this topic. But I will attempt a brief tour through the… Continue reading The Smartphone Wars: The Stages of Apple-Cultist Denial
The Smartphone Wars: NoWin deal “more takeover than deal”?
In this week’s installment of “As the Smartphone World Turns”, we hear dire rumors from Nokia and see (more) evidence that RIM is circling the drain. We finish with a fascinating dispatch from the Android front.
The Smartphone Wars: Almost boring now…
Ah, yes, I see it’s time for another comScore report and another round of breathless journalism on the state of the U.S. smartphone market. But, you know, these are getting almost boring now. Once again, Android rampages over its competition like Godzilla laying the radioactive smackdown on Tokyo. And once again…everyone acts surprised? Get with… Continue reading The Smartphone Wars: Almost boring now…
The Smartphone Wars: Microsoft may win after all
By a curiously-timed coincidence, three lines of evidence have combined over the last week to convince me that I have been seriously underestimating Microsoft’s competitive potential in the smartphone market. One is that I actually got my hands on a Windows 7 phone; another is a report from a major market-research outfit that has been… Continue reading The Smartphone Wars: Microsoft may win after all
Don’t panic over Honeycomb’s release delay
Google’s announced plans to delay the public release of the source code for Honeycomb, the tablet version of Android, are causing some indignation to be vented among the partisans of open source. But should it? This is a good time to reflect on what the freedoms guaranteed by the Open Source Definition actually mean and… Continue reading Don’t panic over Honeycomb’s release delay
The Smartphone Wars: Nod and WinCE
I learned this morning that Windows Phone 7 – the smartphone OS that bricks your phone! – is a skin over a bunch of core components from Windows CE. Which if you came in late, is widely regarded as the second most wretched hive of bugs and villainy Microsoft ever shipped. (Yes, I said “second… Continue reading The Smartphone Wars: Nod and WinCE
The Smartphone Wars: Nokia shareholders revolt!
Well, that didn’t take long. Just a few hours ago I was speculating in a comment thread that Stephen Elop’s cozy deal with Microsoft Microsoft might lead to a fairly near-term shareholder revolt, and lo, it has occurred. Welcome to Plan B. This is pretty dynamite stuff. A group of Nokia shareholders is planning an… Continue reading The Smartphone Wars: Nokia shareholders revolt!
The Smartphone Wars: Nokia’s Suicide Note
Stephen Elop has jumped his company off the burning platform, all right. And, I judge, straight into the fire. No, the choice that seals Nokia’s doom isn’t the tie-up with Microsoft (though that’s problematic enough, and I’ll get back to it). It’s the way Elop has failed to resolve Nokia’s drift and lack of a… Continue reading The Smartphone Wars: Nokia’s Suicide Note
The Smartphone Wars: iPhone 4V Falls To Earth
So the Verizon iPhone arrives, iOS is finally multicarrier, and consumer first-day reaction is “meh…not interested”. Honestly, I wasn’t expecting this. Yes, I predicted, based on looking at AT&T’s 4Q2010 numbers, that Verizon iPhone sales would be “anemic”. There are statistical clues that AT&T has already largely saturated the market of people who really want… Continue reading The Smartphone Wars: iPhone 4V Falls To Earth
The Smartphone Wars: Elop’s Burning Platform
Wall Street Journal’s TechEurope is running the full text of an astonishingly candid memo by the CEO of Nokia. Read the whole thing, in which Elop says Nokia’s performance and strategy over the last few years has been a disaster and it’s time to jump off the burning platform before the company is consumed by… Continue reading The Smartphone Wars: Elop’s Burning Platform
The Smartphone Wars: Android hits #1
The technology press is abuzz with news of a report from Canalys that Android is now the #1 smartphone platform in the world, with its 33% share of sales edging out Symbian’s 31% and far surpassing Apple’s 16%. In the U.S, Android smartphones are now 53% of all sold. Once again, I was expecting this,… Continue reading The Smartphone Wars: Android hits #1
The Smartphone Wars: AT&T CEO reveals all
Well, well, well. A hot-off-the-press AP article, “AT&T CEO: We’ll push Android phones”, finally sheds light on the vexing question of why AT&T let Apple out of its exclusive a year early. It’s just stuffed full of revelations, but the implication the reporter fails to draw is bigger than any of the fascinating facts on… Continue reading The Smartphone Wars: AT&T CEO reveals all
The Smartphone Wars: The Fall and Fall of Windows Phone 7
And now, for a bit of comic relief, let us examine the state of Windows Phone 7. It launched just over three months ago in a cloud of hubris – Microsoft’s first-ship party featured pallbearers lugging a huge mockup of an iPhone (and the rest of what you need to know about that moment was… Continue reading The Smartphone Wars: The Fall and Fall of Windows Phone 7
The smartphone wars: Samsung folds under pressure
Some months ago I wrote (in Flattening the Smartphone Market) about the real significance of the Android 2.2 announcement. That was the moment that Google made clear that it intended to take control of the smartphone feature list from the cell carriers. Subsequently, carrier-loaded crapware and suppression of features like hotspot and tethering have been… Continue reading The smartphone wars: Samsung folds under pressure
The smartphone wars: Verizon gets iPhone
Finally, after 18 months of busted rumors and false starts, Verizon got the iPhone today. Apple fanboys, still stinging from comShare’s November report that Android had passed the iPhone in U.S. market share, are delirious with joy. People who actually get paid to think about smartphone market trends are less sanguine.
The smartphone wars: There’s dross in them thar hills!
Ken Burnside emailed me an interesting tip about a boring financial fact that I think is absolutely fundamental to understanding the smartphone wars. Turns out there’s no gold in them thar hills; the return on investment of wireless networks is negative.